10-4 Magazine / August 2025 29 Junk mail, an advertisement, and two bills. It’s quiet in your mailbox today, but who knows what you’ll get next time. A check? A package? A card from Aunt Mary? It’s a surprise every day. And as you’ll learn in the new book “Mailman” by Stephen Starring Grant, you have one workforce to thank. After moving his family to Blacksburg, Virginia to raise his kids in his hometown, Stephen Starring Grant landed a job with a challenging commute, no big deal, just a logistics thing. And so it was, at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, that he stood in a nearly empty airport in North Carolina, phone in hand, suddenly laid off from this job. With no income and a dwindling savings account, Grant applied for “anything I was even remotely qualified for... and there was never a snowball’s chance of me getting any of them.” Then he learned that the United States Postal Service was hiring. A short wait to be accepted, two weeks of training, and a huge learning curve later, Grant was an official, sworn-in, real-life USPS mail carrier, but it took months for him to feel comfortable. Your mail is sorted before the carrier gets it, he says, and then the carrier sorts it again, by house number into a large contraption called a case. Packages go in a cage. A mail carrier must remember one or multiple routes and there is no cheat-sheet, which can complicate a rural route in mountain country. Furthermore, it’s an acrobatic endeavor: in smaller towns around the country, deliveries are often made from a carrier’s private vehicle, from a passenger seat, with one leg stretched across the cab. So many times, Grant thought about quitting, and then suddenly one day, “I had become a mailman.” We joke. We poke fun at the USPS, complain and switch to bill-paying online. Still, a walk to the box is pure anticipation. It’s a treat to see what’s in that mailbox, and inside “Mailman.” And yet, all is not smooth. Though there are many irrelevant asides and chapters that would be more suitable for another kind of book, “Mailman” is funny, profane, and fun to read. Author Stephen Starring Grant is quick to admit his total befuddlement with his new job and admits when things get rough he pokes a lot of fun at himself, which lightens every letter of this story. Part of his problem with the job – and another issue with this book – is the terminology and trying to remember what’s what, and where. Grant admits that he struggled with that, and readers will, too. Still, most readers will laugh out loud, and they’ll love knowing more about the USPS and its inner workings. If you want an unusual memoir that opens the doors with a behind-the-curtain peek, find “Mailman” because it delivers! And right to your front door!! n The Bookworm Sez: By Terri Schlichenmeyer DELIVERING THE MAIL AARON DISPATCH, INC. ...Stay Loaded At All Times Running California / Arizona / Nevada / Utah For More Information, Please Contact Sina at 760-456-7227 FLATBED WORK AVAILABLE Quick Pay Availabe ***FLATBED TRAILERS AVAILABLE FOR LEASE***
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